Parlez-vous anglais?

We have arrived in PARIS! The trip on the Eurostar yesterday evening was very nice, but we were still running on empty. Trying to get currency exchqnged and figuring out the metro did not sound so appealing at 11PM so we dragged ourselves over to the very long queue for the taxis. I looked over my Rick Steven phrase book about 30 times to figure out how to say "can you take us..." and after an intense ride in the back of a mercedes, we got to our hostel, Le Montclair . To our amazement, it was clean, nicely decorated and very friendly. Even more surprising, our room is above all hostel expectations. Sure we climbed 5 flights on a spiral stair-well, but we have a small private room with a private bathroom. Oh, and the view is wonderful. We have two long windows that open up to a skinny balcony that over looks north-east Paris. Sacred Heart is illuminated at night beyond the other buildings and residences and the light from the Eiffel Tower could be seen in the clouds just to the right of us.

Because of our lack of sleep this last month, we slept in, missed our complimentary breakfast and didnt get started until after noon. As we searched for hostels for our upcoming trip to Switzerland, we mingled with two english speaking twenty-somethings. Cal from NYC and Eric from Sweden ended up being really nice and helpful. We went out together and ate our first Parisian meal; a HUGE bowl of 3 cheese penne pasta and you better believe I ate all of it.

After being sent in the right direction by our fellow english speaking friends, we finally arrived at a train station to figure out our Eurail passes. In short, Amanda and I are travelling to Zurich, Switzerland in about 5 hours and staying there for about 24. Lame, I know, but we want to go to Switzerland!

The rest of the day we spent shootin the breeze, doing Parisian things. Our plan was to visit the Louvre, but it had started to close by the time we got there. It was still nice to get around, shop and explore Paris as the sun set. Solidays, a music festival was going on and there were bands on every block playing all sorts of tunes. Of course we had to watch the band playing awful covers of English songs. It was a really good time watching cute French hipsters and an old man strung out dancing to songs they didnt know the words to (except for "I shot the sherrif" I guess everyone knows that one), plus Amanda got to dance with a drunk French guy until I literally pealed him off of her. All the craziness made us hungry and we had some pizza and the best red wine I have ever had.

wooo Zürich tomorrow!